


Stronger Than This

by harperslanding



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Attacks, Gen, Phobias, autistic garnet, does that mean garnet has anxiety?, i hope the readers know, i sure dont, ruby has anxiety, this fanfic is not legal advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-08 00:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20984972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperslanding/pseuds/harperslanding
Summary: Garnet’s stronger than this. Garnet can single-handedly fight enemies that the other Crystal Gems would be forced to team up against for strength in numbers. Garnet can take blows with ease that would force most gems to retreat to their gems to regenerate. Garnet can put her life on the line to keep Steven and the others safe, multiple times a day, without needing a break.And yet here she is, shaking and gasping for air and generally in a complete meltdown, over the most mundane of dangers.Or: The one where the Gem everyone can lean on needs to lean on one of her teammates.





	Stronger Than This

**Author's Note:**

> anyway so this fandom NEEDS more Garnet-centric angst
> 
> so here's a pearl & garnet hurt/comfort fic where pearl is doing the comforting and not the other way around! featuring my personal headcanons: Ruby and Sapphire are both autistic (which obviously means Garnet is too) and Ruby has anxiety!
> 
> having literal future vision to tell you that everything will be ok would probably be so helpful for people with anxiety. except when your future vision says you're probably going to die.

She frowns.

Nobody notices. Nobody ever does. When one spends thousands of years with a neutral expression at all times, well, her friends sort of grow tired of asking her what the problem is whenever she’s not smiling. At some point they realise that maybe she just does not emote as visibly as others do, that maybe she’s always fine even when it looks like it may be otherwise.

Thousands of years of being the leader, the responsible one, the dependable one, the one everyone else leans on but that has nobody to lean on herself, certainly hasn’t helped.

“Hmm,” she mutters to herself. Pearl, of course, is being her typically paranoid nagging self, rambling at great length about the precautions that she’s read in some thirty-year-old guidebook. Amethyst is laying back in her seat carelessly, staring out the window and telling Pearl to calm down at regular intervals.

Amethyst was the first of the Crystal Gems to get into the habit of not using her weapon around humans if she could help it. Amethyst was the first to bond with them -- not the condescending interest that the others had, that Rose had with humans before she met Greg, but a proper, true friendship with another human. Amethyst was the first to try eating and drinking like humans do. Amethyst was the first to try human sports and other games.

Amethyst is, in many ways, the most human-like of the Crystal Gems -- bar Steven, of course.

Amethyst is, in many ways, the most human-like of the Crystal Gems -- and one of those ways is that, like humans, she has _absolutely no idea_ how dangerous this is.

She’s staring out the window carelessly, not even glancing up at their route. Pearl’s reading a guidebook verbatim and giving constant reminders as though she wasn’t doing this exact thing, except more dangerously and recklessly, two years ago when she first met that pink-haired human at the concert. And Steven is staring at the road with his hands firmly on the steering wheel.

Garnet sits in the front passenger seat, trying to look neutral, not bored like Amethyst but not hysterical like Pearl, because Steven needs some sort of balance between Pearl yelling advice in an anxious tone and Amethyst assuring him that it’s perfectly safe.

She’ll be the first to admit that she lacks experience with cars. Or any vehicles, really. She’s ridden in Greg’s van, sure, but Greg’s lived in that van for years and she can trust that he knows how to use it safely. Steven, however, is still in the process of learning to drive -- still at the stage where it’s illegal for him to drive without the person immediately next to him having a license, which will create some very awkward scenarios in the event that they get pulled over. Steven lacks Greg’s experience and skills, and like most humans, probably has no idea just how dangerous this is.

Also, if she remembers correctly, the last time she willingly rode in Greg’s van was over two years ago, and she jumped out in favour of riding on the roof as soon as he played music she didn’t like.

She’d rather liked to ride atop the car now, honestly -- then she could at least have the security of knowing she can jump away at the first sign of danger. Maybe she’d be strong enough to put the whole car to a halt before it could crash, if she was fast enough. But Steven’s visibly a teenager and making subtle mistakes fairly often; he’s in enough danger of being pulled over without the added difficulty of a magical alien on top of the car.

She knows that she should just focus on what’s happening right now -- that she should have faith in Steven’s ability and focus on being able to prevent anything from going wrong in the moment by simply correcting him rather than fixating on possibilities that are, quite literally, miles away.

She checks one more time anyway.

She sees a million possibilities. That’s normal.

Most of the possibilities are awful. That’s also normal, in a world where anything can go wrong at any time but most of the time nothing does. She’s learned to tune out the outcomes that only result from poor, out-of-character decisions and the ones she can prevent just by saying “no, Amethyst” or “put that down, Amethyst” or “stop trying to flush yourself down the toilet, Amethyst”.

She checks just to make sure that there is a good option -- a future where Steven goes for a drive, stops at the Big Donut, and then goes home without being pulled over or worse. That’s a possibility, of course. It always is.

She spends perhaps a little too long fixating on the other options.

Every inch they travel is an opportunity for sirens to blare and police to demand that Steven pull over the car -- he usually gets off with a warning for breaking minor rules due to the three magical alien foster mothers riding with him. Getting pulled over wouldn’t be so bad. It would at least provide a reasonable excuse for them to walk the rest of the way.

Every turn is an opportunity for him to veer just a little too far to the left, or just not quite far enough, and not realise his mistake until it’s too late. An opportunity for him to frantically press the break just in time … or an opportunity for panic to grasp hold of him and paralyse him, making him deaf to Pearl’s frantic suggestions.

If Pearl or Amethyst or herself are poofed, it won’t be so bad. Their gems can be protected until they regenerate. But Steven is a human who can’t regenerate and if he gets injured, he won’t be able to just retreat into his gem until he’s healed. He’ll be in pain, and if the others are poofed he might not be able to get help, and if he’s bleeding and he can’t get help …

And then there’s the possibility of a gem cracking. What happens to Steven if his gem cracks? Can he heal it with his spit just like he could another? Or would he be forced to limit his movement to an absolute minimum to delay the crack’s spread, until the inevitable day when his gem shatters and he’s left as a weak, vulnerable shell of the half-gem he used to be?

Could he use his tears or his spit to glue broken shards together? Or would Pearl’s shards be buried in the sand, the area marked by a memorial stone dug into the ground? Would she have to tell Amethyst’s human friends about what happened? Would Ruby wonder along the beach in despair, knowing that she’ll never truly be whole again, not now that her wife is --

“Steven!” continues Pearl hysterically, forcefully bringing Garnet back to reality. Her voice is grating, like nails on a chalkboard. Garnet turns to look through the window and suddenly feels nauseous; the landscape is moving so fast it’s turning into a blur and it’s disorienting. Suddenly she’s hyper-aware of the screeching of the car’s wheels on the road and the droning of the engine, and the car becomes a very claustrophobic place.

“You’re veering too far to the left! You need to turn more gently, see --”

Garnet really does not need more explanations on what could go wrong. Or more noise.

“Pearl,” she says irritably. “you’re _driving_ me up the wall.”

The pun is not lost on them; while Pearl indignantly launches into a rant about how she’s just trying to help, Steven bursts into laughter (can he see through the laughter? can he still concentrate? is he still concentrating?) and Amethyst snorts.

All comedy is derived from fear.

* * *

Crumbs fly across the room as Amethyst talks with a large donut in her mouth. “That was epic, Steven! When’s your next lesson?”

“Uh…” Steven gives a hopeful smile. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Score!” cheers Amethyst. “We’ll get more donuts on the way home, right?”

“Uh… well, I’m kinda broke…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay next time.”

“But your species does not even have a concept of currency…”

“Eh, I’ll figure something out.”

Pearl’s never-ending safety lessons are falling completely on deaf ears, but she continues them anyway. “You need to practice more before you start going on proper roads, Steven! I caught so many mistakes, you could have gotten pulled over, and I don’t know how we would get the police to leave us alone when there were three magical aliens in the car, I swear, you’re still not good with turns at all, if you don’t start practicing more -- Garnet, what’s wrong?”

Garnet freezes.

“I’m fine.” she mutters, barely heard.

Pearl raises an eyebrow. She checks that Steven and Amethyst are still busy, and mutters, “You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine.” Garnet repeats.

Pearl sighs. “Show me your gems.”

Garnet raises an eyebrow underneath her visor -- isn’t she meant to be the leader? --but does as she’s told, holding out her open palms so that Pearl can inspect her gems for any crack. Pearl takes Garnet’s hands into her own, and peers closely at them with her blue eyes. She frowns.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“No they’re not.” lies Garnet. Considering that Pearl is literally touching her hands right now, it’s a rather obvious lie.

“You look awful,” Pearl insists. “I think you need to rest.”

“I’ll go to my room.” Garnet suggests, but before she can even start walking she’s pulled back.

“Your room only exists when you’re fused and I don’t know that you could get out in time if something happened,” she explains. “Come to my room.”

Garnet gives a disgruntled grunt, because she knows that Pearl won’t leave her alone if she agrees to stay in her room and that’s the last thing she wants. But Pearl has a point about the possibility of unfusing, so she mumbles her thanks and walks toward the temple door.

“Amethyst!” calls Pearl. “Garnet and I have to go search for an ancient Gem artifact in my room, you take care of Steven while we’re busy.”

“Cool,” mutters Amethyst, going back to her conversation with Steven. Pearl opens the door and drags Garnet through. Garnet stumbles at the sudden movement and Pearl has to catch her as the door closes behind them.

“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is firm and commanding and it quickly persuades Pearl to move her hands away. A second later she regrets it, realising that she’s probably making Pearl more aware that something’s wrong, but there’s not much she can do to stop that at this point.

“Sit down,” insists Pearl, standing at the edge of one of the many small fountains in her room. Garnet sits at the edge of the fountain, and Pearl takes a seat next to her, just a little too close.

“Give me space.” Her voice is terse and strained. Pearl quickly shuffles over a few inches to give her the space she needs.

“Can you explain what the problem is?” Garnet shakes her head. “Well, is there anything I can do to help?”

“Quiet,” mumbles Garnet tersely, and Pearl stays silent.

Garnet listens to the flow of the water behind her and breathes a shaky sigh of relief. It’s exceptionally rare for Pearl to catch her in a state like this; it was worse back on Homeworld, before Ruby met Sapphire, but now Ruby’s anxious tendencies are balanced out by the fact that she has future vision to remind her that everything will be okay in the end.

Garnet’s stronger than this. Garnet can single-handedly fight enemies that the other Crystal Gems would be forced to team up against for strength in numbers. Garnet can take blows with ease that would force most gems to retreat to their gems to regenerate. Garnet can put her life on the line to keep Steven and the others safe, multiple times a day, without needing a break.

And yet here she is, shaking and gasping for air and generally in a complete meltdown, over the most mundane of dangers.

She tries to regulate her breathing. She does not need to breathe at all, really; but at some point during her millennia on Earth she realised that certain tasks were made easier when she had the option of exhaling air when necessary, and so during one of her regenerations she formed a pair of lungs.

The problem is that lungs are almost exclusively found in the bodies of life forms that do need air, and that because of that, they tend to grow uncomfortable quickly when deprived of it. Shapeshifting them away is a simple matter when the gems have to go into space, or underwater, but it’s harder to simply get rid of them when she’s currently using them. So, she tries to slow her breathing down.

She places a hand in the fountain behind her, letting the water run down her arm. It’s soothing, in a way. She can see why Pearl likes them. She lets the water wash over her palm and slowly begins to calm herself down.

* * *

When she stands, it’s dizzying; she still hasn’t completely recovered, and it’s a little disorienting after staying still for so long. She falters slightly, and stumbles forward, but soon she’s standing steady once again.

“Thanks,” she mutters, voice quiet from shame. “For letting me stay here.” She turns to leave and is immediately pulled back by a pale, skinny arm.

Garnet pulls away from Pearl’s grip and turns to face her, sighing.

“Garnet,” insists Pearl. “You still haven’t explained what the problem was.”

“I’m aware of that,” replies Garnet.

Pearl gives her a look. “You know I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong. And if this happens again, Amethyst will never let you hear the end of it.”

Pearl has a point. But what is Garnet supposed to say? _“Oh, I started looking into possible futures that involve us being shattered in a car accident, and willingly fixated on it until I had an anxiety attack.” “Hmm, that seems reasonable. Let’s cancel Steven’s driving lessons purely for your comfort.” _Not going to happen.

“Garnet, please.”

She sighs. “You know how dangerous driving is.”

Pearl stiffens. “Did you see something --”

“I saw lots of things,” explains Garnet, holding up a hand to silence her. “I can always see many different possible futures, the good and the bad. But sometimes when a lot of the possibilities end badly, it can get overwhelming.”

“That … makes sense,” says Pearl slowly. “Is there any particular reason that the different possibilities overwhelmed you in relation to Steven driving?”

“Well…” She pauses. “When prejudiced gems are attacking us, I can just fight them off. When we’re in the car … if anything goes wrong, there’s not enough time for me to open the door and get out before I can stop it. It makes me feel…”

“Helpless,” finished Pearl, and she takes Garnet’s lack of verbal response as confirmation. “Hmm. Can you think of anything you could do that might make driving easier for you?”

Garnet takes a few seconds to answer. “I do have an idea. But … Steven would probably get pulled over.”

* * *

“Aw, not again!” protests Amethyst. “I’m meant to be meeting up with Bismuth later on, we’re gonna play soccer!”

“What’s soccer?” asks Pearl, and she never gets an answer.

“I’ll try to make this quick,” mutters Garnet apologetically as the car pulls over.

As usual, several policemen get out of their police car, and Steven enthusiastically shows them his license. “I know I look young, but I’m actually sixteen! So don’t worry, sir, I’m allowed to drive!”

“Um…” says a policeman, staring at Steven, then at the top of the car, then back at Steven.

“I know what you’re about to say,” says Garnet. Nobody’s sure if she means it literally or not; she does not need future vision to guess that this will go exactly like the last twenty times they got pulled over. “But there’s no actual traffic law that says you can’t have a magical seven-foot-tall alien riding on top of a vehicle.”

The policeman frowns. “There’s got to be a law against that! It’s illegal for humans or animals to ride --”

“But not specifically magical seven-foot-tall aliens.”

“So we’re actually not breaking any laws!” says Pearl.

Several minutes of debates later, a sputtering police officer reluctantly allows them to go free. Amethyst sighs. “Y’know, G, wouldn’t it be easier to just sit in the car?”

“No.”

Garnet refuses to elaborate. Amethyst decides that she’s content with her lack of meaningful answer.

Eventually, the police of Beach City will give up. They’ll realise that every time a law is put in place that makes it illegal for Garnet to ride atop the car, she’ll either find a way that the exact wording does not apply to her or somehow get the law revoked. They’ll realise that pulling Steven over is just a waste of time and effort and let him continue to have a giant woman or two riding on top of his car.

Garnet knows this. Sapphire knows this.

After all, there’s always a good possible future.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so basically i was watching the Steven Universe Future trailer and i was like "hang on, steven having a license i can buy but how the heck is he able to ride with a literal magical alien on top of his car without getting pulled over?"
> 
> and then i was like "hang on, didn't garnet also ride on greg's van in ocean gem just because the music was bad?"
> 
> and then this happened.
> 
> Disclaimer: This fanfic is not legal advice. In real life, if you get pulled over for having a seven-foot-tall magical alien riding on top of your car, saying that there's no law against specifically seven-foot-tall magical aliens riding on top of your car will probably not prevent you from getting arrested.
> 
> (also idk if 16-year-olds can actually have licenses? im just going with it because Steven is presumably 16 in SU Future and he can obviously drive in the trailer. im not 16 yet and also have no idea how to drive so forgive me if my descrptions of the mistakes Pearl is pointing out are a little off)


End file.
